What do the results of the survey say about Business Angels in the Czech Republic?
Although angel investing is not yet widespread in the Czech Republic, Czechs are still among the most skilled investors in startups. Their strategies have generally been successful so far. Almost nine out of ten investors were able to make a profit on their investment, with nearly 12% making more than ten times their investment. Two-fifths of investors consider investing in startups more profitable than other forms of investment. These are the findings of a survey conducted by investment group DEPO Ventures, which is building a unique syndicate of angel investors in addition to angel funds. The survey was also conducted in partnership with the law firm Havel & Partners and the agency CzechInvest. The aim of this fourth annual survey was to map the environment of angel investing in the Czech Republic.
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Machining of the future - Factoree of the Málek brothers receives seed investment of 900k euro
The brothers Jakub and Milan Málek have been digitizing the engineering production market for 6 years. Their company Factoree is a turnkey supplier of engineering products, especially for companies in the field of agricultural machinery, construction equipment, or public transport, and this year they will deliver over 1 million parts, despite not owning a single machine tool. In fact, Factoree's founders are leveraging the existing capacity of smaller Czech engineering companies and, thanks to their online platform, are meeting their demand with orders from all over the world. They have now raised 900 thousand euros from Presto Ventures, DEPO Ventures, and the SFG financial group to digitalize their communication with suppliers further and expand abroad.
Types of pitches - and how to make them work
If you’re reading this article, the chance is you aim to create a solid pitch deck, but you are not exactly sure how to tackle it. Different types of pitches differ primarily in their length, therefore also structurally and content-wise. There are three main categories of pitch based on these criteria - elevator pitch, investment teaser, and a full investor pitch.
Why is it important to have a great pitch deck?
There are several things to mention while considering why making an impactful pitch deck is absolutely crucial. Everyone knows that a good presentation of any kind is just as important as your main points within the argumentation. In this case, you are probably not only selling your concept, but more importantly, you are selling the potential of yourself as well as your team. In the end, there is no right or wrong within the structure, however, because the final decision based on your pitch is reduced to either investment or no investment, a pitch can be effective or not. This either/or situation can be of course quite intimidating because even if the pitch is good, but not great, there is a significant possibility that investors simply will not be interested in an idea that does not seem rock solid. This is then perhaps the most important argument for the necessity of a superb pitch deck.
DEPO insider: Jan Pecník and his ride toward a bike business
The Netherlands and bicycles simply belong together. There are about one and a half times more bicycles than people in the land of tulips, and the infrastructure is extensive. Cities are welcoming to cyclists; therefore, everyone sees bicycles as a natural means of transport. But many people who come to the country for the first time (and not only them) find it difficult to find a suitable machine. Moreover, bikes are stolen quite a lot. Jan Pecník, who came to the Netherlands a few years ago as a student, also encountered exactly these problems. He wanted to put things in order. First, he started building a database of bikes and their owners. The aim was to easily identify the owner of a stolen bike. Or a badly parked bicycle that the technical services had taken to a ‘salvage’ parking lot. Later, he built an online marketplace around the database, where you can sell a bike at the click of a button.
Startup Yummy which solves all cooking worries is heading over to the Czech market.
Grocery shopping can be time-consuming, expensive, and creates a lot of waste. The Estonian startup is aware of these problems. Yummy is a service that prepares and delivers packages of fresh cooking ingredients, precisely measured for the number of servings ordered, based on the customer's selection. Additionally, it comes with a detailed recipe for the preparation of the desired dish. With the service, which has been dubbed cook & eat, Yummy wants to enter new markets. This year, Poland is already on the cards, with the Czech Republic and the whole of Central and Eastern Europe also in the crosshairs. Yummy raised a total of €3.4 million in the pre-seed phase. The angel fund DEPO Ventures also participated in the investment round and will help Yummy with fundraising and expansion.
Looking back at the Engaged Investments Conference 2022
During this year’s Engaged Investments Conference organized by DEPO Ventures, we welcomed a number of speakers primarily from the CEE and the Baltic regions. They all talked about the current state of investments, as well as what the future of the venture capital ecosystem might bring. Among the main topics discussed this year was the need for cooperation between VCs and angel investors, as well as the potential prospects of cross-border investments. We hope, that after a full day of exciting debates combined with networking, everyone who attended may have come home a bit wiser than they were before.
Tatum receives $41.5 million funding to growth of a unique blockchain development platform
Tatum, the company drastically simplifying blockchain applications development, today announced it has received $41.5 million in funding to accelerate marketing, educational efforts, and community building for slashing the complexity and time-to-market of creating blockchain-based applications critical to digital finance and Web 3.0. The investment augments the company’s previous financing and includes Evolution Equity Partners as lead, as well as Octopus Ventures, 3VC, Tensor Ventures, Depo Ventures, Leadblock Fund, Circle, and the founders of Bitpanda.
DEPO Ventures invests in data automation. Swedish-Czech startup Forloop raised 875k euros.
No successful company today can do without rapid adaptation to the constantly changing market conditions. Finding out the behavior of the target group, new trends, and competitors, all of this can be crucial for the further development of a company. The problem with data is that its processing is often very slow, difficult, and most importantly manual. In addition, many companies do not use this additional data at all and rely only on their internal data. To handle this problem, the Czech-Swedish startup Forloop.ai has created a platform to automate work with external data, which has been proven to speed up the work of data analysts while generally saving time and resources. The startup has now raised around 875 thousand EUR from Czech and foreign investors, including the angel fund DEPO Ventures. The funding will be used to improve the product, grow the number of users and expand into the US.